Navajo Code Talkers

“Toh-ta bih-di-hol-nehi know that besh-lo and da-he-tih-hi will arrive in be-neen-ta-tso.”  …  So what’s your best guess as to what this might mean?  OK, it’s Navajo (a native American Indian tribe) for “British executive officers know that German submarines and fighter planes will arrive in August.” If you didn’t guess right, it probably means that you can’t read the language of the Navajo people. Don’t beat-up your self a whole lot; the entire Japanese war effort tried and failed during the heat of WW II.  This secret Code was used by the Americans and is considered to be the most successful “code” used by either side!

Navajo terms … (literal meaning)  or (War Effort Meaning)

          bih-di-hol-nehi … (those in charge)    or   (Executive Officer)

          toh-ta …                (between waters)  or             (Britain)

          besh-be-cha-he …        (iron hat)       or            (Germany)

          da-he-tih-hi …         (humming bird)  or        (Fighter Plane)

          besh-lo …                      (iron fish)    or           (Submarine)

          be-neen-ta-tso …         (big harvest)  or              (August)

    Borrowed from Schott’s Original Miscellany, by Ben Schott …

They were known as Navajo Code Talkers. Young Navajo men who transmitted secret communications on the battlefields of WWII at a time when America's best cryptographers / secret code writers were not getting the job done, these humble sheepherders and farmers were successful in fashioning the most ingenious and successful code in military history. Serving with honor / excellence in every major engagement of the Pacific theater from 1942-1945, this unbreakable code played a most important part in saving innumerable lives as well as speeding up the war's end.

Prior to World War II, every code that the United States had developed for warfare had been broken.  Known as experts at code breaking, the Japanese were never able to make sense of the secret Navajo code.

The success of the code was primarily due, in a large part at least, to the complexity of the Navajo language.  It didn’t hurt either that at the outbreak of World War II, there were only around thirty people who were not Navajos who actually could speak the language, and not all of them could speak it fluently.

Originally, there were only twenty-nine Navajo men selected and sent to boot camp at Fort Elliot in California where they became the 382nd Platoon, USMC.  Each recruit was required to speak both English and Navajo.  When they reached Fort Elliot, they had to learn how to survive the harsh environment they would encounter in the Pacific.  Due to their ancestral background and way of life, the Navajos proved to have outstanding physical endurance and qualities that were suitable for the job at hand. Before the wars end there were 540 Navajo Marines and about 420 of these were trained as Code Talkers. 

It is most certainly believed that America would not have been able to win the war as effectively without the Navajo Code Talkers, and it is difficult to deduce the number of American lives that were saved with its use.  Most military historians believe this code is the only unbreakable code in the history of all warfare. 

In 2002 there was even a major motion picture produced about the now famous Navajo Code Talkers.  Dubbed as one of WW II's best kept secrets the film reveals how the U.S. Government trusted Navajo Indians to carry out top-secret missions by using their unbreakable code.

Sources …                                     http://library.thinkquest.org/J002073F/thinkquest/Code_talkers.htm               http://www.navajocodetalkers.org/                                                                                                    Schott’s Original Miscellany, by Ben Schott                               http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1808415774/info